NewBooks John Sutherland has a tip for the next time you go into a bookshop: look to page 69. If you like the look of it, buy the book. It is advice that works well for Sutherland’s own latest tome, How To Read A Novel: A User’s Guide. Page 69
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The Independent on Sunday When actress-turned-author Carol Drinkwater went in search of the origins of the olive tree for her new book, The Olive Route, she thought she would find the secrets of Mediterranean culture and cuisine. Instead she found that entangled in the tree’s roots was such conflict and
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The Independent on Sunday 2nd October 2006 Douglas Kennedy is the kind of author you want to bump into at book parties. Deliciously gossipy, his sharp observations are telling little narratives about overheard pretentiousness and Hollywood fakery that reveal a deep cynicism about celebrity hype and a clear perspective about
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Independent On Sunday 2nd October 2006 Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, flamboyant designer-turned-television presenter, and his wife Jackie have come over all Janet and Ray, the Disgusted of Middle England couple on the Catherine Tate Show. “Top of the stairs she was, wearing trainers – and she had her tummy hanging out! With
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It all started at a dinner party in Buford’s Manhattan apartment. Among the guests was Mario Batali, TV chef and proprietor of acclaimed New York eatery Babbo. He turned out to be the dinner guest from hell. Within moments of his arrival chez Buford, the writer knew inviting him was a mistake. Batali, one of the new breed of alpha-male cooks whose main rule is excess, took over, treating his host to his first lesson in muscular cookery and other guests to a night of macho drinking.
Orion website Henry Porter’s taut thrillers set in the shadowy world of international espionage have the ring of authenticity for a reason. “I know a lot of spies,” he says as if it is the most natural thing in the world. “I have done some work that is not entirely
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“It is not as if the book was not well received, it was, and the questions and answers from the floor when I did events were very affecting. But just being there in Berlin, where these things took place, speaking in German and answering these questions, it was,” he pauses, searching for the right words. “It was tougher than it has been for me with other books.”
Nando Parrado is one of those rare humans. Spend five minutes with him and you feel the weight of the day fall off your shoulders and realise that it isn’t good to be alive, it is bloody marvellous.
The Left isn’t going to like Antony Beevor’s book on the Spanish Civil War, but he’s used to controversy – his account of the fall of Berlin elicited heated protests from the Russian ambassador. Danuta Kean talks to him about the joys of digging in the archives, his despair about history students today and his brush with Jackie Onassis
Is Bill Nighy, who plays Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the coolest man on the planet?
